Old garden walls

[stuart45]

It's a walnut tree. A right gnarly old specimen that has lost a number of limbs over the years given the diameter of the trunk and current branches. If it were on my land, I would probably have looked to lop some of the longer branches to take some weight off the remains of the trunk.

I should probably pull off the ivy again from the tree. Once the owls are finished with their chicks soon. It's a constant battle here. The walls suffered massively from the ivy over the years. The wall I have taken down had ivy growing up between the two skins of brickwork and all over. It's remarkable the damage caused over time. The thickness of the ivy underground that has tracked along the whole length of the wall is incredible. Hopefully, I've dug up enough to disrupt it's return...

I have to expect a few issues in future from the trees near the wall. Hopefully the wall won't be knocked down after all this effort!

Ideally you want a root barrier installed between the wall and the trees. Be a shame for future damage after all the hard graft.
I'm sure you'd be capable of doing a rounded section with a few tips. Key thing is to take your time.

 

[Cubist]

Good luck with the ivy - I needed a chain-saw with one such here. Typically though I wander around with a Fiskars long handle billhook to remove new ivy growth from my trees but these days the local police know its me and no danger to the public if they get a report from a startled rambler finding a bedraggled bloke with a blade lurking in the hedgrerows - always surprises me how fast some of them can move.

We too have a walnut but ours is only about 100 years old - yours looks a lot older. So far though in our 15 year tenure I have managed to harvest only TWO nuts thanks to the arrival of hordes of squirrels that appear in April and early May to strip all the new fruit long before its gets to mature - and that's despite my best efforts to police their activities and offend those who think squirrels 'charming' creatures, by shooting em whenever and wherever I can.